'Newt', The Gentle Busker

I thought I'd lost these pictures, which would have been sad, but just a case of the wrong memory card.

On one of my wanderings, last Thursday I think on my way back from Central Park, I met a busker, 'Newt'. He asked me if I could spare a cigarette, so I made him two.

He nodded as I dropped the dollar bill into his guitar case.
"Thank you."
I asked if I could take a few pictures.

"Sure man," He smiles wryly, "But sorry about looking like a hobo... Guess I'm going for that Neil Young look... except he was already famous before he stopped caring about his appearance."

He laughed when I said it's all part of the charm.

Newt is "between apartments" at the moment. I guess that's the way homeless people describe it.

Then he sang. Dylan and Cash, with a voice that sounded like it had been soaked in whisky, rubbed by sandpaper then left in the smokehouse for twenty years. He sang like only a broken man with broken dreams could.

People came and went. Some dropped a quarter, some dropped a dollar, but they all went on their seperate ways before long, to the museum or the office or the girlfriend.

I passed him a cigarette as he finished his song dropped him a dollar and bid him a good day.